Orkney Folk Tales Page 7

  After a while a stranger walked over to Tam and said, ‘You have a boat for hire, I hear.’

  ‘Yes, I have a boat for hire and a fine boat she is too, in fact …’

  ‘I need you to carry me and a cow to the north isles,’ the stranger interrupted. ‘I’ll make it worth your while for leaving the fair early. I shall meet you at the pier in half an hour.’

  Tam went off to find Willie, but there was no sign of him. Eventually he found him lying at the head of the Anchor Close, dead drunk. Tam gave him a kick and cursed his thirst and then headed to the boat to wait for his passenger. Soon he saw the stranger coming down Bridge Street leading a cow. He was a tall man, very well built and with hair and beard as black as a crow. When he got to the boat Tam moved forward to help him get the cow into the boat, but the stranger picked the cow up like it was a sack of wool and set her in the boat. Tam stared in amazement, saying, ‘You weren’t last in the queue when strength was being dished out.’

  The stranger stared at Tam with a frown on his face, but said nothing.

  Tam sailed the boat across Kirkwall Bay and headed towards Thieves Holm, where criminals were hanged as a warning to the crews of visiting ships.

  ‘My name’s Tam, by the way. I haven’t seen you around before. What’s your name?’

  ‘A close tongue keeps a safe head,’ replied the stranger, glaring at Tam coldly.

  ‘Well, where do you want to go?’

  ‘East of Shapinsay,’ said the stranger.

  Tam sailed his boat through the String, a stretch of water with powerful currents that can test the best sailors if they are careless. Once the boat was off the east coast of Shapinsay Tam said, ‘Where to now then?’

  ‘East of Stronsay.’

  Tam was a sociable man and he enjoyed a good chat, but whenever he tried to strike up a conversation the stranger would fix him with a cold stare and say, ‘A close tongue keeps a safe head.’

  When the boat was off Stronsay Tam asked, ‘Do you want to land here?’

  ‘East of Sanday,’ came the reply.

  ‘East of Sanday?’ said Tam, who was rather confused and getting a little bit annoyed with his passenger.

  ‘What do you mean, east of Sanday? There’s nothing east of Sanday but the fjords of Norway and this boat was not built to cross the open sea.’

  ‘East of Sanday,’ growled the stranger.

  Tam remembered how easily the man had picked up the cow and decided not to argue with him. Instead he turned the boat east past Auskerry and set a course north towards the east coast of Sanday.

  As they sailed a fog started to gather around the boat, which caused Tam some concern.

  ‘The fog is drifting in off the North Sea.’

  ‘A close tongue keeps a safe head,’ replied the stranger.

  ‘A close tongue might keep a safe head, but a close fog would not be safe for either of us.’

  At that the stranger smiled a sulky smile; the first time that Tam had seen him show any sign of mirth. Suddenly the fog lit up like the rays of the rising sun were shining through it and it hung like spun gold on the surface of the sea. The boat sailed into the swirling, dancing mist which blocked out any sight of the islands. After a short time the fog lifted and there before them Tam saw a beautiful island with fields of ripe corn swaying in the breeze. Men and women were walking around lovely houses and strange blue cattle grazed on the slopes of the green hills; it was the most beautiful sight that Tam would ever see in his life. As the island came into view the stranger leapt to his feet and rushed towards Tam, saying, ‘I have to blindfold you now for a time. Do as I say and no harm will befall you.’

  Tam remembered the cow being picked up and thought that it would be the safest thing if he went along with the man’s demands. He knew now that his passenger must be a fin man and that this was Hilda-Land, their magical floating island home, invisible to mortal eyes. The fin man used Tam’s napkin to blindfold him, but it didn’t quite cover his eyes and he could see a bit of what was going on. The boat grounded on a gravel beach and Tam heard voices all around him as they unloaded the cow. Then he heard the most beautiful singing as the mermaids began to try to enchant him with their voices, until the fin man shouted, ‘You needn’t try to cast your spell on him for he has a wife and bairns at home on Sanday.’

  When the mermaids heard that their song changed to a sad lament, which was so heartbreaking that the tears came to Tam’s eyes. He heard the sound of a bag of money being thrown into the boat and felt the boat pushed off into the sea. The fin man shouted to him, ‘Head for starboard and you will soon be home.’

  Tam then realised that the fin folk had pushed off the boat against the course of the sun, as they are an unholy race. By the time he removed the blindfold he found himself wrapped up in the fog once more, but soon it cleared and he found himself drifting off the south coast of Sanday in familiar waters.

  When Tam got the boat ashore he undid the bag and poured the coins onto the bottom of the boat. He saw that he had been well paid for the journey, but every coin was a copper one. The fin folk love the ‘white money’ as they call silver, too much to part with it.

  A year passed and the Lammas Fair time rolled around once more. Tam was in Kirkwall during the third day of the fair, but many times afterwards he would regret having got out of bed that day. As he was taking a cog of ale he saw the fin man amongst the crowd and he went over to greet him.

  ‘Hello; it’s good to see you again. Would you like to join me for a drop of ale? So, what have you been up to since I last saw you?’

  ‘Did you ever see me?’ asked the fin man, taking a small box out of his pocket and holding it up to Tam’s face.

  ‘You will never have to say that you saw me again.’

  With that the fin man blew some of the fine powder that was in the box right into Tam’s eyes. Tam screamed as his eyes burned and the sight left them forever. After that time Tam never saw another thing and lived the rest of his days in darkness. So, you see, there is many an evil heart hidden under a fair face, and you should never be too trusting of strangers; especially fin men.

  Sometimes, during the summer months, you can see phantom islands floating on the sea where there shouldn’t be land at all. These were said to be the summer abodes of the fin folk, called Hilda-Land in the North Isles of Orkney. On Rousay the phantom island was known as Heather Blether and was seen lying out in the Atlantic Ocean, to the west.

  I have seen Hilda-Land myself on a couple of occasions; once when I was in a small boat I saw it as a shimmering piece of land between two islands in Scapa Flow. The second time was more unusual and mysterious. It happened in the early 1980s when I was a young man. I was out for a visit to Valdigar, the farm where I was born in Tankerness, and had gone for a walk with two of my elder brothers. When we were on the shore below one of the runways of the airport, looking north, we saw a strange island between Shapinsay and Stronsay. It was quite large and seemed to have a building on it. One of my brothers had a pair of binoculars and so we had the opportunity to study it in some detail. The great grey building was very large and had what looked like a huge arched doorway. None of us could identify the house or the island that it stood on. After about fifteen minutes the island started to slowly melt away, starting at the west end, it shimmered and lifted from the sea. The whole bottom of the island started to slowly vanish, giving it the impression that it was floating over the sea. In the space of about ten minutes it was gone; the middle section with the house being the last to remain. So, what was it? Could it be a part of Sanday brought forward to our sight through refracted light? Or was it really a rare glimpse of Hilda-Land, the home of the fin folk? I shall leave that up to you to decide.

  THE VANISHING ISLAND

  There was once a fisherman who lived in one of the North Isles with his wife, their two sons and their daughter. Although he also worked the land he had a boat and he and his sons would go out fishing to try to supplement their meagre supply of food,
which was often not enough to keep hunger at bay.

  One day the man sent his daughter down to the shore to gather limpets for bait for his hooks, but she never returned. They went looking for her and they found her bucket of bait lying on the shore, its contents spilt over the rocks, but there was no sign of the girl. The man had been a fisherman all his life and knew every tide and current that flowed around the island, so if she had fallen into the sea and drowned he knew where her body would come ashore. Every day he searched the rocky headland for his lost daughter, but her body never returned home to them.

  The years passed, and the fisherman set off to sea with his sons one fine summer’s day. The morning was clear and sunny and the men were in good spirits as they went about the task of setting their lines of hooks in the hope of getting a rich harvest from the sea. Then, to their horror, they saw the fog coming rolling in from the east. They pulled in their lines in the hope of getting their boat near to land before the fog engulfed them, but they were too late. The fog was so thick that they couldn’t see a thing in the white-grey gloom that surrounded them. This was a very dangerous situation to be in, because their boat could hit a rock and sink or they could drift out into the ocean and lose sight of land completely. They rowed very slowly around in the hope of seeing land when, to their relief, they saw a dark shape through the murk and they headed towards it. They found themselves approaching an island with a fine gravel beach where they pulled the boat up out of the water, looking around to see if they recognised where they were.

  They could see nothing familiar, but they did spot a path leading from the beach. Thinking that a path must go somewhere, they followed it and found that it led to a great big house. This house was much grander than the laird’s house back home and they approached it with a nervous feeling. The fisherman knocked on the door and, to his amazement, it was opened by his own daughter; the girl who had gone missing all those years before. There was an emotional reunion and she invited them in. If the outside of the house looked grand then the inside was even more impressive. There were beautiful carpets on the floors, tapestries hanging on the walls, lovely furniture and everywhere there was the glint of silver and gold.

  The fisherman asked his daughter how she had come to be there, in such a fine house, when everyone at home had given her up for dead. She said, ‘That day, when I went to the shore to gather bait, I forgot what you had always warned me never to do, and I turned my back to the sea. The next thing that I knew a fin man had come out of the sea and grabbed me. I was so scared I forgot to say a blessing on myself, which would have robbed him of his power over me, and he dragged me into his boat. He pulled on the oars and the boat shot across the water like an arrow from a bow, and he took me here to this island, where I have lived ever since. He will be home soon and you’ll get to meet him.’

  Sure enough, very soon a large, black-haired man came into the house and was introduced to his in-laws by his wife.

  ‘I’m glad to meet you,’ he said, in a friendly voice, ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  He talked to the fisherman for a while, but no matter how hard the girl’s father tried to steer the conversation towards what island they were on the fin man would always change the subject. At last the fin man said, ‘Tell me, do you have any cattle to sell?’

  ‘Why, yes,’ said the fisherman, ‘I do, as it happens. I have a fine cow that I was going to have to send to the market, although I would be sorry to see her go.’

  ‘I’ll save you the bother,’ said the fin man, ‘and I’ll pay you well for her.’

  He handed the fisherman a bag, and when he looked inside he saw that it was full of gold coins. The fisherman had never seen so much money in his life before. Then it dawned on him that he now had the chance to find out what island they were on.

  ‘Tell me,’ said the fisherman, ‘what island is this, so that I can bring the cow to you?’

  ‘Never worry about that,’ the fin man said, ‘I’ll come and fetch her myself. But come, there is a meal waiting for us. Eat your fill, and be welcome.’

  The table was indeed covered with dishes of fish and seaweed stewed in seal fat; the fin folk have no vegetables, you see. The fisherman and his sons ate their fill, saying that these were the tastiest fish that they had ever eaten, and believe you me, they had eaten plenty of them over the years. Then one of the sons looked out of the window and said, ‘The fog’s lifting; we can be going soon.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said the fin man, ‘you can go home soon.’

  They started to walk towards the door and were about to say their goodbyes when the girl said, ‘Father, is there anything that you would like to take home with you? Any – treasure – which you would like to take with you?’

  The fisherman looked at his daughter and smiled.

  ‘Yes, there is a treasure here that I’d like to take home with me.’

  ‘Just name it, and it’s yours,’ said the fin man.

  The fisherman looked at his daughter and smiled, and she smiled back at him.

  ‘You see that big gold dish on the sideboard over there?’ he said.

  ‘Take it; it’s yours!’ said the fin man.

  Well, the poor daughter was a bit hurt by this, because, of course, she expected her father to choose her. But I guess he thought that she had a good life there with the fin man and if she came back all that she could expect was hard work, hunger and an early grave. He took the gold dish and the bag of coins and they walked down to the shore where the boat lay. As they were saying goodbye the girl took her father to one side and said, ‘Here father, take this token,’ and she handed him a knife with a beautiful carved handle. ‘As long as you have this knife you will have the power to see this island again and you can come and visit me.’

  The fisherman thanked his daughter and turned to help push the boat into the waves.

  ‘Just pull in that direction and you’ll be home in no time,’ said the fin man.

  They pushed the boat into the water and the fisherman jumped in over the stern, but as he did so he dropped the knife into the sea where it sank to the bottom. The fog was all around them again and the island was lost from view. Suddenly, they came out of the fog bank and found themselves back in bright sunshine again, and to their astonishment, they were in the bay right below their own home. They sailed to the shore and pulled the boat up into the noust15 and headed home. They were met by the fisherman’s wife, who came hurrying to meet them.

  ‘Oh, thank god you are safe,’ she said, ‘I was worried sick when I saw that fog coming in.’

  ‘Oh, we’re fine,’ said the fisherman.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you something that’s not fine,’ said his wife, ‘Brenda, our best cow, is gone!’

  ‘Gone?’ said the fisherman. ‘What do you mean, gone?’

  ‘Gone as in gone,’ snorted his wife, ‘how many “gones” are there? I went into the byre just now and she’s gone.’

  The fisherman smiled to himself. He knew that the fin man had used his magic to transport the cow to their island.

  ‘Never you worry about her,’ he said to his wife, ‘she was well paid for.’

  He showed his wife the bag of gold coins and told her the story of their daughter and the fin man. He showed her the dish too and she was amazed by it all. After that the fisherman was rich, and if he had to go out fishing again it was because he liked to fish and not because he had to. But he had lost that knife and so, no matter how often or how hard he tried he never saw that island again and he never saw his daughter again either. So I’m not so sure that he was that rich after all.

  The fog that swept in around the fisherman’s boat is an all-too-dangerous occurrence in the summer months in Orkney. The warm waters of the Gulf Stream, which keeps the temperature above freezing in the winter months, meets the cold waters from the North Sea and, mixed with warm air from the land on a hot summer’s day, turns to fog. You can watch it rolling in over the sea at an alarming speed. My mother, Lizzie Drev
er, was born in the small croft of North Tuan in Westray in 1922. When she was a little girl she would be sent off to the headland called the Point of Sponess when the fog came in and her father was at sea in his boat, the Spray. He would be setting creels to catch lobsters to sell and crabs to eat; nobody at that time would ever dream of buying a partan, as the large edible crabs are called in Orkney. They were considered a pest in those days, not a delicacy, but were eaten or given away to old people in the community. When my grandfather was in trouble, lost in the fog, my mother would go to that headland and look for a small seashell that she called a ‘whistling buckie’, known in English as a flat periwinkle. These small shells come in various colours, green, brown, orange, yellow, and in banded and striped varieties. If you angle them just right and blow into them then they can produce a loud, high-pitched whistle (although this only works with the larger ones). My mother would stand there and blow into her shell and her father would hear her and, putting his fingers into his mouth, he would whistle back in reply. She would slowly walk along the shore, whistling as she went and listening for the reply until she reached the boat noust where the boat was secured. These were cut into the banks of the seashore, sometimes lined with stone, as a shelter for the boat. This practice dates back to at least Viking times, as the archaeological record shows. Once at the noust she would stand and whistle until she saw her father’s boat coming through the fog; the youngest child bringing her father safely home from the sea.

  EYNHALLOW

  The lovely little island of Eynhallow lies between the West Mainland parish of Evie and the island of Rousay. It was called Eyn Helga (Holy Island) by the Vikings and has a well-preserved twelfth-century chapel with monastic buildings around it. It is thought to be the place where the powerful chieftain Sven Asleifarson sent his son to be educated. Where it lies two tides meet and there is often broken water, churning white with foam, raging on either side of it, which is called a ‘roost’ in Orkney (Old Norse röst; a tidal stream). This is recorded in an old children’s rhyme: